


Better Left Unsaid

by Pixial



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Drugs, Guns, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 03:10:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6836620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixial/pseuds/Pixial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes things are just left at "The End."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Better Left Unsaid

He’s been sitting there for hours, staring out the window in the vague direction of his old home, his old friends, his old life. It hasn’t even been a day since the rough patch-up job Paul gave him to keep him from bleeding out. He should be resting. He isn’t. Of course he isn’t.

This is the part of the story no one knows. It’s after the end.You take a deep breath and open the door. Just like turning the next page, despite there being no pages left. But life goes on, even in stories. What happens next is anyone’s game. What happens next is anyone’s game, and maybe you have a chance to aim things for the better.

“Um, hey…” Your words are soft, uncertain. You doubt he can even hear you through the dead air and the bandages around his head. It comes as a faint surprise that he tilts his head in your direction, eyes… eye… remaining fixated beyond the glass. You wonder what it is he’s seeing.

“You’re not one of mine.” A simple, crisp statement. His voice is no louder than yours, but it carries the weight of authority and a thousand regrets. It is the voice of a man broken, stripped of all masks and facades. It is the voice of sacrifice. 

“No… I’m… not.” Here is where things get awkward. You simply do not tell a person that he is a fictional character in your world, nor that this is a method of exploring a story already done. It’s the sort of thing that creates existential crises, and seeing him wrapped in gauze and pain, you really can’t do that to him. “It’s… hard to explain. Think of me as a… a visitation of sorts.”

“A visitation? So the meds are creating hallucinations now? Great.” He laughs, a harsh, bitter sound that makes you wish for a moment that you hadn’t bothered, that you’d just passed this link up. But there’s always the hope that you can somehow change this. Fix a hole in a story that’s been torn to shred. So you remain in the doorway, listening. 

“Or are you an angel? Ooh or a demon, right?” Now he turns to you, and you can finally see the haze of drugs needed to overcome rough surgery gleaming from one, glazed eye. He’s probably as high as a kite, and you feel your heart sink. There’s a good chance he won’t remember this conversation as anything but a fragment of a dream. “So what do you want, Oh Great Visitation?”

You hold your arm, looking down to avoid the agonized, maddened gaze. “To… to talk. To understand.”

“Understand? Understand what?” He returns to the window, and you take a step forward. After all, he hasn’t thrown you out of the room yet. Maybe this could work…

“Why.” One word. So many things spoken within it. Why? Why had he thrown away everything to gain almost nothing? His plans were gone, his robot destroyed, and now he had no one left beyond two tired soldiers and pieces of scrap metal. Back to what you assume is square one.

He sighs and shifts on the bed, finally turning his back on the glass and whatever he had been contemplating. “Why? To make things better.”

“What things?”

“The world, Visitation! The _world_!” He gestures, flinging his arm to the side before gasping in pain. On reflex, you step closer before he waves you off. “I’m fine. Don’t come near.” He doesn’t mention that there’s a pistol under the pillow beside him. He doesn’t have to. You’re the reader. You already know. 

“But it’s not better,” you state, the words almost burning your tongue with their distaste. “And now your friends, your _family_ are hurt and hate you. Why?”

He growls, years of frustration building up in a snarl. “Because I had to! It wasn’t supposed to be like this! Tom shouldn’t have come back! I’d have gotten in and out and…” 

“And what? Just left again? I guess it would’ve been better. Their house wouldn’t have blown up.”

He’s silent for a long moment, staring at the blanket now clutched in his fist. “They would’ve been happier. I was building a paradise, a place for us all. But they _never_ would have understood! They’d have seen the army and the weapons and everything as a joke! _Me!_ As a _joke!_ The trigger happy maniac with a communism fetish!” He’s rambling now, and you think that it probably hasn’t been that long since he was given his latest dose of pain-numbing narcotics.

“You should’ve tried to explain it to them.” You’re insistent, firm. Just like every communications book you’ve ever read told you to be during a debate. “They were your friends. You didn’t even stop to think about them.”

“EVERYTHING WAS ABOUT THEM!” His roar stuns you into silence, and his hand flies back to smack the bed beside him. Your skin crawls as you realize he’s fallen off the cliffs of rationality. This was a mistake. “It was ALL for THEM! You obviously know about them! You know how they are, _Visitation_.” The title was smeared with disdain. “After all, you know _so_ fucking much about me. They find danger in the fucking _toilet_! We need a world where they can be safe, everyone can be safe! I was building that world! And I don’t need you to tell me how badly I fucked it up!”

His hand grips something, and you spy a sheen of dark metal. Your chest constricts, breath suddenly catches. “N-now, Tord…”

“ _ **DON’T CALL ME THAT!**_ ” He screams and raises the pistol, aiming it at you. Thunder echoes in the room with the sharp sense of gunpowder. You freeze, anticipating the cold feeling of pain at any moment. It never arrives, and with your heart in your throat, you turn your head. There’s a smoking hole two inches from your left ear. He missed. He’s down an eye and pumped full of pain medication. Of course he missed.

The sound of footsteps running toward you signal that your audience is at an end. You take one last look at the pitiful creature on the bed, gun smoking in his hand and tears streaming down one side of his face. This was a mistake. There’s nothing you can do here.

You fly back through the door before he can recollect himself and fire again. There are shouts, but none of them halt you as you run for the exit. Following you down the hall are the rantings of a madman about an intruder and someone attempting to get the gun away from him. You don’t look back. The exit is a few steps ahead.

You reach it. You hit the X and close the page. This was a mistake. You should have passed this one. There was nothing you could do. You should have just kept going and kept your mouth shut.

**Author's Note:**

> Written on request. Turned out way more meta than it was supposed to.


End file.
